Young Brazilian Anousim Visit Israel on Birthright

For the first time, three young Bnai Anousim from Brazil are visiting Israel this week in a joint undertaking between the Taglit/Birthright program and the Shavei Israel organization.  Sara Rachel Kadosh da Fonseca, Oziane Pinheiro Braga and Jefferson Higino are here together with dozens of young Brazilian Jews for a ten-day visit in which they will travel around the country, see the Land and its sites and spend a Shabbat in Jerusalem.
Bnei-Menashe, straight from India to the Western Wall   Jerusalem: Indians from the north eastern Jewry, commonly known as Bene-Menashes, are here for their formal conversion to Judaism. Some 50 members of the Jewry community have arrived in Israel on a tourist visa and are a waiting the formal conversion.
Jerusalem: Hundreds of Kilogrammes of 'matzah' (unleavened bread) and copies of 'Hagaddah' --text recounting the Jewish people's Exodus from Egypt-- with explanatory notes in the Mizo and Thadou-Kuki languages have been despatched to India for the Bnei Menashe community to celebrate Passover.
Close to 100 Bnai Anousim from across Spain and Portugal will be gathering this weekend in Barcelona for an annual seminar and communal Sabbath being organized by the Shavei Israel organization.   The seminar, entitled “The Relevance and Significance of Judaism and its Precepts in Our Times,” will bring together rabbis, historians and academics from Israel, Spain and Portugal. They will discuss a variety of topics such as the centrality of Torah in Jewish life and the observance of the Mitzvot (commandments).
The emerging Jewish community of Tarapoto, located in the heart of the Peruvian jungle region, now has its first rabbi thanks to the Shavei Israel organization. Comprising several hundred people, the Tarapoto community consists of descendants of Moroccan Jews who migrated to the area in the late 19th century. Settling in towns in Peru's Amazon basin such as Iquitos in the 1880s, many became involved in local trade and commerce. From there they spread out to other parts of the country's northern interior, such as Tarapoto.   "Assimilation and intermarriage took a heavy toll on the Moroccan Jews who chose to remain in the area," noted Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund. "Now, however, their children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren have begun to return to their Jewish roots."
For the first time, members of a Lost Tribe of Israel in northeastern India will soon be able to study the entire Torah in their native tongue.  Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based group which assists "lost Jews" seeking to return to the Jewish people, last week published a translation of Sefer Shemot (the Book of Exodus) into Mizo, one of the main languages spoken by the Bnei Menashe living in Mizoram, India.
Heirs of the once-great community of Kaifeng are looking at their past and hoping, with help from Israel and Jews worldwide Judaism seems to have vanished from the city of Kaifeng, situated on the fabled Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean. Once, a small but thriving Jewish community existed here centuries before Marco Polo, the great Venetian explorer, traveled through China; a thousand years of assimilation into China has dimmed the Jewish light in the Far East. Yet some sparks remain. "I am a member of the Jewish people and I want to go back to my roots," says 19-year-old Jin Jing in fluent English.
For the first time, a Jewish educational center has opened in Brazil aimed at reaching out to the large numbers of Bnai Anousim living in the area Bnai Anousim are descendants of Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism during the Inquisition which began in the 15th century.
BBC News, Krakow, Poland Poland was home to one of the largest and most important Jewish communities in the world before World War II. Ninety percent of that community was wiped out by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
A new rabbi has been appointed to rebuild the Jewish community in the Polish city of Krakow Avraham Flaks, at the age of 38, has become Krakow's first rabbi since the Holocaust. It should be the dream posting. The southern Polish city has been a centre of Jewish scholarship for more than 700 years. On the eve of the Second World War, it was a thriving home to some 60,000 Jews - a quarter of the city's population.
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